


Care and Feeding

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [10]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Snippet FIc, The one where Aramis and Milady are girlfriends, Unabashed Sentimentality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-21
Updated: 2015-11-21
Packaged: 2018-05-02 16:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5256023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>1. She had never been a 'morning' person.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>2.  "A lost soul am I, helpless to prevent the villainy of these smiling ruffians."</em>
  <br/>
  <em>3. "So it's true," she said, though her tone said that she wished for disbelief.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Care and Feeding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (In which Milady doesn't really do mornings.)

_Care and Feeding_

She had never claimed to be a 'morning person'. A leisurely wake up in a feather bed at a fine inn that served _coffee_ and butter-folded pastries was acceptable. Barely.

Still dark, but all the little birds in the wood were screeching. She blinked the crust out of her eyes and noted with dissatisfaction that she had drooled in her sleep. She stirred wearily and rubbed the corrugated dent of tree-bark out of her cheek. Her left foot, the one missing a slipper, was _freezing_ in the pre-dawn chill, the other tucked awkwardly in the bole of the oak tree where she spent the night. She grasped suddenly for her gear - her pistol was missing but the stiletto was still strapped to her thigh, and the leather document case lay safe in her full red skirts.

"I think that went rather well," floated up from below.

She responded only with a snarl.

"The middle was shaky in parts, I admit." With a rustle of leaves Aramis climbed high enough to proffer his hat, which held two speckled eggs nested inside it. "Breakfast?"

She took one, pierced a hole with her thumbnail, and drained it. The viscous contents were cool on her throat, at least. She passed the other down to Aramis and asked, "Dogs?"

"Not for an hour."

It was dark enough still that one could not tell a white thread from a black. Wolf and lamb time. And the screaming of the birds would cover any sound of their movements.

"Time to go a-hunting, then."

His flashing white grin matched her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just two lost kittens, stuck up a tree.


	2. Don't Forget the Hippocras

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Kitty, it must be said, does not approve.)

A fine and lofty coach rattled into the yard of the inn, well-built, though without a coat of arms blazoned on the side. It was an odd and innocent hour for this kind of custom, when people of consequence preferred to lay in comfortable beds while their lessers laboured, but Johann Keeper, proprietor of the establishment, decided to ignore this - perhaps there had been trouble on the road, and guests of a wealth marked by the fittings of the coach made their own rules.

The lanky coachman drew the horses to a stop with deft hands on the reins, doffed his hat and travelling mantle and, setting his long-handled whip aside, nimbly hopped down. Opening the door he ushered out a woman whose distinguishing characteristic was a quality of _brownness_ : brown hair, watery brown eyes, a travelling habit that was neat, of good cloth, and... brown. On her right temple the garland of dimpled smallpox scars was almost a grace note, the only point of interest. Clearly she was a companion or duenna to the true passenger, of little importance. Johann Keeper craned his neck to see past her into the shadows of the coach, but spied only a veiled lady.

"A room for my lady!" cried the coachman, "Your finest suite, if you please."

The small brown woman said, very solemnly, _"Ní mór a admháil, they are rogues and liars."_

"Yes, indeed," said Aramis unctuously, and told Johann Keeper, "Madame Kitty wishes you to be particularly exacting in the airing of the bed-linen. The Red Lyon kept its sheets sadly damp, and our lady's health, you must understand, is very delicate. She was stricken most gravely ill and we were forced to take our custom elsewhere."

"Ah!" said Johann Keeper, enlightened. The Lyon was a notorious poacher of custom, and he was delighted to poach back.

 _"I would tell you to count the spoons,"_ added Kitty, _"but they aim always for the larger game. This coach, for example, was not their property last evening."_

Johann Keeper looked again at the coach, briefly curious as to the lack of travelling luggage. Just then a white hand draped itself over the sill of the coach's window. One finger, laden with a ruby ring like a gout of blood, moved slightly. A small chittering creature leaped out, and landed on Kitty's head, who endured it with the stoic respectability of a long-time household retainer. 

_"Nor was this hellbeast of a monkey,"_ she said.

"And I will need the use of your kitchen for half an hour, a flask of your best wine, the spice box, a hippocrene sieve or the finest cloth to fashion same, and of course privacy to work. Medicinal wine for my lady, you see. Her health, as I said, is delicate."

_"Ah, why do I bother? No-one on this dismal continent speaks the tongue I speak. A lost soul am I, lonelier than Ruth come out of Moab, helpless to prevent the villainy of these smiling ruffians. I weep every time I receive my wages, which are not regular I might add, and pray every morn that I might return to the honest green hills of Meath, the prayers of my evening dedicated the while to the lightening of their wicked hearts. But what would you: a living is a living."_

Aramis listened gravely, and said, "Yes, that is very wise, a suite with south-facing windows if you please, good innkeeper. On the corner with that lovely view of the town square, I think."

_"Stop pretending you know what I say!"_

"Enough dawdling! Spit spot!"

 _"Lock up your daughters,"_ she added grimly, _"and possibly your sons."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello Kitty! Nice to see you on the stage at last.
> 
> She is an import from the book: Milady's maid. Sort of. Writing her straight made me sad so I hybridised her with Planchet, Bazin, and Grimaud, a little, and added a language barrier - which is awful for the girl in a lot of ways, but gives her freedom to snark. :-) 
> 
> _Ní mór a admháil_ \- "It must be admitted" according to this list of Irish phrases: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=245889
> 
> A hippocras is wine mulled with spices and strained through a cloth sleeve called a hippocrene sieve, hence the name. (In _Twenty Years After_ d'Artagnan ordered one when he needed an excuse to loiter at an inn for half an hour and I got curious. I've been racking my brains as to why Aramis might want to brew one at this time, and I suspect that it's actually a peace offering for Kitty, after waking her up in the middle of the night to stand in the road as a distraction while the others committed highway robbery.)


	3. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Milady is ruthless and mean and will kill you if you say otherwise.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: mental health issues; nauseating sentimentality; Original Baby Character; some gore.

The barn was empty of cattle and held only an odorous memory of their presence, mixed with the green and sweet smell of the hay and, from outside, the sharp reek of spent gunpowder. She strode through it, ignoring the squish around one booted foot as she trod unwisely, and climbed the ladder to the upper loft, hot and bright where the afternoon sun shone in.

"So it's true," she said, when she reached the top, though her tone said that she wished for disbelief.

Huddled in the far corner was Aramis, holding a gun on her. "It's not safe," he whispered, and wrapped himself further around the white-blanketed bundle on his lap. He shivered, in the muggy heat under the eaves, but his aim did not waver.

"Safe?" She lifted her chin and touched the soft blue scarf wrapped about her throat.  "I'm never safe, Aramis. I'm the scariest bitch this side of the Rhine."

A huff of shaky laughter and he lowered his pistol. "Come into my parlour, gracious lady?"  The child in his arms shifted, and snuffled in its sleep.

His sword, she knew, was still outside, caught in the ribs of a hussar; the butt of the pistol he held was dyed red from where he had been using it to smooth foreheads between snatching the time to reload.  Of more concern, perhaps, was the trickle of blood running down his temple.  He flinched when she reached to touch it.  Well.  A blow to the head could make anyone daft for a time.  What of it, really?

"I don't know why I do half the things I do," Aramis said, rubbing one hand across his eyes.

"Neither do I," she admitted.

Sitting next to him in the straw she lifted his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. 

Through the window of the hayloft the remnant of the fighting was quite hidden. She looked at a fallow field waving with long tasselled grass. She knew that there would be tiny flowers hidden among the stems, and lost herself in the sense-memory of running through such a place, when the waving stalks would brush against bare legs in the cool of a summer evening, the kind of running where one wants to be caught - the grasp of strong arms about one's waist and falling to the ground buoyant with laughter...

If something had seeded in her in that hot July, would things have been different? But no, walking away from Pinon with fruit in her belly would only have weighed her down at a time when she needed to be fast and dangerous. A child would have killed her; that's all she need know.

"Some people aren't made to be happy," she said gently. "We have to steal our sunshine, drop by drop, and it falls away soon enough."

She poked the infant gingerly. Its blurred gaze passed over her, and a tiny hand closed around her finger. "Does it have a name?"

"Estelle-Marie," he whispered. "I should take her back. Her parents will worry."

"Let them eat shit," she said grandly.

They stayed that way, playing pretend, until the sun went down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel there should be a kitten joke somewhere here, but it just isn't coming.
> 
> Also: to those of you who have been reading this series and giving feedback, thank you so very much. I realise that these cut-short, begin-late-leave-early snippets aren't the most comfortable read, but they are the only way the story is getting written. (I promise that there is a set point that they are leading to.) And every time someone lets me know they liked it, I feel so warm and fluffy.


End file.
